File photo.

The Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest soft-drink provider, will donate US$4 million through its Coca-Cola Foundation to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Water Stewardship Program in China and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Yangtze Partnership, announced Geoff Walsh, Director, Pacific Group Public Affairs & Communications of Coca-Cola.

These donations form part of the Company's long-standing commitment to water stewardship. Since 2007, initiatives across Asia Pacific have followed a three-pronged approach to water sustainability that can be summarized as "Reduce, Recycle and Replenish". Coca-Cola's 2020 goal is to safely return to nature and communities an amount of water equivalent to what is used in all of its beverages and their production. As part of that goal, Coca-Cola will improve water use efficiency by 20 percent by 2012, while also continuing to expand its support of watershed protection and sustainable community water programs in the Pacific region.

US$2 million of this commitment would be provided to support the UNDP Water Stewardship Program in China, which helps manage water resource efficiency and drinking water safety in the country, said Mr. Walsh. The Program was initiated in 2007 as a unique public-private partnership between Coca-Cola, the Chinese Government's Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Commerce and UNDP. The partnership aims to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers and residents, as well as provide safe drinking water to local communities and improve water resource management. In total, Coca-Cola has provided over US$3.5 million to the partnership's programs so far.